1. Field of the Invention
The invention is intended to improve safety for ground vehicle traffic about industrial plants and warehouses, and for outdoor venues like airport runways and taxiways. This invention especially improves the situational awareness and orientation of pilots while navigating about the grounds of an airport before takeoffs and after landings.
2. Relevant Art
Situational awareness of pilots about an airport has been identified as a main contributor to runway incursions around the world. Experts have prioritized runway incursions as a top area of weakness in aviation safety. Improving the ability of pilots to quickly recognize safe runway exit locations at runway/taxiway intersections, and to better recognize the runway/taxiway intersections they are approaching will reduce the number of incidents, accidents, incursions, and excursions that occur each year. Due to the existing arrangement of runway/taxiway lights, visual orientation is especially difficult at night and during periods of reduced visibility due to precipitation and fog. Unfortunately, snow accumulations obscure visually painted pavement indicators.
Since the early days of aviation, devices have been developed for assisting pilots in navigating and recognizing their environment. Until this invention, such devices have consisted of single points of light arranged about an airport, some with lenses for light focusing for greater visibility to an approaching aircraft. In basic terms, these existing visual cues exist as nodes of light. Light nodes can become confusing at night, however, or during reduced visibility periods or when approaching the light from an angle out of alignment with the runway or taxiway they are illuminating. At larger airports, these lights may appear as a “sea” of random lights which may not provide adequate visual cues for pilots to easily navigate thereabout.
Recent systems have been designed for reducing lighting costs using technologies that consume less energy. Systems have been engineered to allow the recessing of lights to be flush with the runways and taxiways thereby reducing the risk of damage to same. Systems have also been installed to act as conventional stop lights, i.e., electronically controlled, visual signal indicators for serving as a “back up” to errant air traffic controller instructions and/or pilots and ground personnel who may accidentally cross a runway while another aircraft is taking off or landing. All of these systems improve travel safety while deploying the conventional technology of single light nodes, sometimes in varying colors, or with continuous illumination, pulsating and/or preset flash sequences.
Single nodes of light offer a good foundation for situational awareness. But such devices are not completely adequate. Recent research has taken place with regard to video displays, i.e. the visual cues used by the human eye, and the way our eyes behave to transmit sight information to the brain. From that research, it has been shown that short sequences of discontinuous lines allow the brain to more efficiently interpolate line sequences and create a more complete picture. Such line segment interpolating allows the brain to identify patterns by mapping out line segments in several directions. Similar technologies have been used for reducing the amount of information being displayed on a video monitor while still enhancing the picture that viewer perceives. However, the number, size and length of these line segments, created by pixels, vary greatly from the segments of light employed by the present invention.
Many of today's current airport runways employ a lighting system that uses runway and taxiway edge lights like those shown in accompanying FIG. 1—Prior Art. Such lights, or traditional omni-directional luminaire 10, are commonly affixed to a vertical spar 20 which, in turn, connects to a round base plate 30. That base plate 30 typically attaches to the airport runway surface with 4 to 6 bolts (not shown) on a 10.25 inch bolt circle. From the center of base plate 30, vertical spar 20 extends upward and houses electrical wires (not shown) for supplying power to the luminaire/light source 50 sitting atop vertical spar 20. Below base plate 30, there is usually a transformer (not shown) at least partially encased in the ground and connected to wires for completing the electrical circuit for each luminaire.
In the airport lighting industry, the preceding model luminaire is known as an L-867 or “base” when it has no light atop, an L-861T for the elevated taxiway light model and an L-861E for the elevated runway light model. A light diffuser can be attached to the illumination source with one or more clamps or other quick disconnect means. That light diffuser protects the illumination source from external elements while also focusing the light emanating from same. The diffuser may be colored to help pilots better distinguish a runway light from its taxiway or obstruction light equivalents. A main advantage of the present invention is that it can be retrofitted to fit partially over or about an existing diffuser unit, fit fully over same, or fully replace the lens/single bulb of a known airport diffuser unit with the radially armed indicia described below.
Other known prior art devices in this field include the following (arranged in chronological order): Hansler et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,083,315, with their elevated runway and taxiway edge lighting system that employs light emitting diodes. Rhodes U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,714 more broadly covers LED lighting systems for embedding to improve the visibility of airport runways, walkways and roadways. These same embedded LED's can also be used for floor marking Rizkin et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,155,703 shows a surface-mounted light assembly for illuminating the outer boundaries of a ship deck or heliport. Using a prism with three flat sides, Barrow U.S. Pat. No. 5,669,691 shows an in-pavement light fixture for airport runways and taxiways. A system with a series of reflective mirrors is used by the runway embedded, light emitter of Ahlen U.S. Pat. No. 5,438,495. The flush runway light system of Pannier U.S. Pat. No. 4,924,364 employed a removable optical unit.
Puttemanns et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,521,836 showed an elevated runway, taxiway or threshold edge light beneath a sealed glass dome. That same year, Tauber et al. patented their own airport runway, taxiway or edge light in U.S. Pat. No. 4,499,527. Finally, the runway lighting system of Daley U.S. Pat. No. 3,567,917 is known for employing flexible, light-conveying conduits. Despite the foregoing, improvements to this specialized field of transportation illumination are still an utmost goal as spelled out in Transportation Safety Improvements, Aviation Issue Areas, Most Wanted. See, www.ntsb.gov/recs/mostwanted/aviation_issues.htm#most.